They Called Her Nina
by 100 Silver Wings
Summary: Hospital stays do things to people. ONESHOT


_I truly have no excuse. I felt like uploading something. So I rooted around my folders, found this, patched it up to make it almost acceptible, and released it on the general public. _

_Disclaimer: The three fictional hospital staff you shall find below do, indeed, belong to me. Everything else on the other hand...well, not so much. _

I've found Hell, I really have. It has white walls and white floors and white eyes that peer through you at the most awkward moments. There are fifty seven flowers in the white tables, and not one of them means a thing. The people who visit me barely register. Nurse Lori checks my vitals and gives me pills and slips needles on the inside of my elbow. Doctor Eshlind surveys me hawkishly and mutters to the nurses. He makes me grit my teeth. He seems pretentious.

A mother visits me and she begs to know what she did wrong. An instructor visits me and pushes his gray hair back as he calls me a crazy bitch. A coworker visits and cries and breathes into my hair that she is so, so sorry. A peer visits after she drags her carcass out of her own room a few wings away to show me the steel plates in her leg from the car accident. Her skin is darkened by bruises and scabs, and yellow from drugs.

Nurse Lori is nice, but Nurse Myra snarkily remarks that she doesn't know where I belong: in the medical ward or the psych ward. She is unhappy with a personal something, I am unhappy with her.

The coworker—her visitor tag reads Lily and it rings a rusty bell—visits more than the mother. She even stays a night once, early on. She never stops crying and holding my hand and giving me cherry kisses. The kisses make me uncomfortable and they bring back green lights and pink fleece. And they only occur when nobody else is there.

I don't eat their food. It's nasty and thick, it'll make me gain weight. I've been out for so long, when I get back, Thomas will be so disappointed if I've gained any weight on my leave. I can't disappoint him any more after this unexcused absence. He visits once, but I think it's an imposter. The man has lines for a face and wears an ash gray turtleneck and says he is Thomas, but he can't be. He mimics Thomas's mannerisms exquisitely; perhaps he is a brother? "You crazy…you crazy bitch, Nina!" He grumbles again and again.

That's funny. Nina. That's what they call me. Somewhere, I know that is me. I am Nina. I don't feel like a Nina, though. I feel too sick to be a Nina. Nina has fun and laughs and dances; I curl in an apathetic hospital bed with horrid pain in my stomach. Nina saves me, of course, more so than the mother or the coworker or the instructor.

I have stories about this Nina. It's a rather dark story, I must admit. She's a pretty young ballerina with big promise, having just won the lead roll in her company's production of Swan Lake. A new dancer threatens her, though, and she goes crazy. She needs to be perfect! Perfect, perfect, perfect! She never quite gets there, of course, and she kills herself at her explosively elegant performance. Oh, how romantic, I think. This is the stuff of harlequins, you know. That tender tragedy is the skeleton of perfection, really.

This is how I know I am not this Nina girl, after all: Nina is dead. She died with glass in her guts and blood everywhere, oh everywhere. This Lily, this Thomas, this…this Mother claim that the Nina is still alive, laying here in bed with me. I look to the left, and to the right, and see nobody with me. And, as a fact, I know I am not the Nina. Nina is long dead, she never stood a chance. The glass cut too deep and she bled out before the paramedics were even in the building. It wouldn't be as beautiful a story if she had lived, of course.

* * *

"It's you; you're Nina!" A girl named Lily cries. Her hands knot in her hair and her frustrated tears smear her dark makeup down her tan face. Why does she even bother with the makeup for her visits, since she always ends up crying it off before she leaves? She looks like such a wreck.

"Lily…ah…Lily, this Nina is…um…Nina's dead. I'm…I'm sorry if you knew her, she must have…have been wonderful. She's dead now though. Sorry." I put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She stares at me in horror.

"What is wrong with you?" She screeches. "You're Nina! You're Nina! You're Nina! Why can't you understand that?" She holds my face tightly and brings her nose to brush against mine. "You're the Nina that I danced with. You're the Nina that I fought with. You're the Nina I partied with. You're the Nina I fucked. You're Nina, understand? You!" She shakes me for good measure.

I grin shyly. "I'm really…ah…real sorry, Lily. I'm not this Nina."

She leans back, shaking with sobs. Her hands cover her face and she scrunches up into a rattling whirl of confused girl. It's pitiful, really. She's so stubborn and ignorant. "Get over here." I sigh, patting the bed beside me.

Lily shivers over to my hug and she just cries more. It's starting to annoy me, but I cannot just let her hurt alone.

* * *

"Oh tell me, tell me what I did, Nina!" The mother moans. "I love you. I love you so much. What did I do wrong? I did something wrong, I know it, so don't be polite; tell me. Please. It'll kill me otherwise."

I stare at the mother blankly. I don't like her at all. She thinks she did something, she's overdramatic, she relishes victimizing herself. It makes me want to be away from her, but she won't leave. I whine to Nurse Myra that I want her out. Nurse Myra sneers that she's my mother, why wouldn't I want to see my own mother?

* * *

"Nina, Nina, you crazy bitch." The instructor mutters. "Crazy bitch." It's all he can say. He doesn't sit down, and barely looks at me. He even polishes his shoes at one point, just not looking at me. He's very rude.

* * *

"See? This is where they put the screws in." The peer grins, lifting her papery hospital gown up for me to see. "That hurt like hell, I'll say. Hurt like hell. But I'm a fighter, it doesn't hurt me."

This one is totally bonkers. She's off the wall.

"Ma'am? Um…I…uh…I don't know you." I admit. She looks at me quizzically. "I, uh…could you please leave now?...please?"

Her thin mouth pulls in an angry line. Her dark eyes glaze over in rage. "You little shit, Nina! You rob me of my…my career! My entire career! And then you don't even have the decency of even knowing me? You little shit!" She starts screeching, and a couple of nurses I don't know the names of pull her out, trying to calm her.

"Beth…Beth, please, shhhh. Shhhh."

* * *

One day, Nurse Myra turns up without her wedding ring and looking ornery. I know what her trouble was now. She isn't any nicer, though. She still loves to antagonize me.

* * *

"Nina! Nina! NINA! You're Nina…Oh God…you're Nina…" The girl called Lily begs to me, grabbing my hand. She's on her knees at my bedside, doubled over, wild with grief and desperation.

I gulp a few times, uncertain. "Um…miss? Lily, miss? I'm…I'm not Nina. I'm sorry. Nina's…Nina's dead."

She looks up at me, horrified and revolted. Then she leaves. I don't think she's going to come back again.


End file.
